What works best to treat Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome?

Mul­ti­ple chem­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty (MCS) is a con­di­tion in which you expe­ri­ence neg­a­tive health effects from expo­sure to low lev­els of com­mon chem­i­cals.

In some peo­ple, the expe­ri­ence of Mul­ti­ple Chem­i­cal Sen­si­tiv­i­ty over­laps with the symp­toms of fibromyal­gia or chron­ic fatigue syn­drome. Some­times a doc­tor will diag­nose more than one of these con­di­tions in the same per­son.

In any case, if you have chron­ic health prob­lems affect­ing mul­ti­ple organ sys­tems, and your symp­toms seem to wors­en when you’re exposed to cer­tain chem­i­cals, you’ll want to know what treat­ments oth­ers have found to be most help­ful.

It was a scary expe­ri­ence at first – it’s full of close-ups of gar­gan­tu­an mus­cles and bulging veins. It’s a blog for the folks who haunt the free-weight sec­tion of the gym. The kind of guys who buy those huge cans of pro­tein pow­der at Gen­er­al Nutri­tion.

As a lit­tle girl grow­ing up in rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia, sum­mer was a mag­ic time of no school, long days at the play­ground across the street from my house, time with my sis­ters doing puz­zles and play­ing Monop­oly on the porch.

Band­ed Hair­streak

One sum­mer mem­o­ry must have been from the sum­mer of 1969-a most mag­ic sum­mer of love and hip­pies and Wood­stock. For me how­ev­er it was my ear­li­est mem­o­ry of the sum­mer read­ing club at my local library. I was old enough that sum­mer to walk to the library alone and the children’s librar­i­an was eager to sign up sum­mer read­ers. She had some­how made tiny rock­et ships from salt that slow­ly crept toward the moon’s sur­face as you tab­u­lat­ed more books. (Remem­ber this was the sum­mer we land­ed on the moon.) I can still remem­ber mov­ing my rock­et game piece on the path and the salty residue it left on my fin­ger­tips.

Our expo­sure to envi­ron­men­tal poi­sons is at an all time high. Tens of thou­sands of new chem­i­cals have been intro­duced into the bios­phere since 1945. Shock­ing­ly, most have nev­er been test­ed for safe­ty.

They’re in the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the prod­ucts you apply to your skin, and just about every­thing else you come into con­tact with.

Mean­while, every cell in your body is try­ing to per­form its own bril­liant bal­anc­ing act – deal­ing with its own local envi­ron­ment while cease­less­ly per­form­ing its par­tic­u­lar vital func­tion. The cells of our diges­tive tract, ner­vous sys­tem, and immune sys­tem – all of them high­ly meta­bol­i­cal­ly active – are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble.

We have to assume that all this tox­ic expo­sure pos­es at least a poten­tial to do harm. That’s why it’s impor­tant to min­i­mize your expo­sure to poi­sons and strength­en your body to deal with them as best as it’s able.

It isn’t the job of a bac­teri­um to make you sick or kill you. Like all oth­er organ­isms, bac­te­ria just want to sur­vive and pass their genes onto the next gen­er­a­tion.

The bac­te­r­i­al species that destroys its host wouldn’t last too long. It would be like a fam­i­ly that tried to keep warm by set­ting fire to the rug. Sure, Mom, Dad and the kids could warm their hands for a few min­utes, but before long their house would be a pile of ash­es.

If infec­tious bac­te­ria kill the patient, they have no place to live. A bad plan for long term sur­vival.

That’s why, of the mil­lions of bac­te­ria liv­ing in our diges­tive tract, only the occa­sion­al few are poten­tial agents of dan­ger­ous infec­tion. The oth­er 99.99% have evolved over the mil­len­nia to live in har­mo­ny with us. And we’ve evolved to live in har­mo­ny with them. In fact, we often derive ben­e­fit from the organ­isms liv­ing inside us.

ADRs are Adverse Drug Reac­tions from pre­scribed med­ica­tions. They’re a hot top­ic of research and debate with­in the Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion, oth­er agen­cies that reg­u­late drug devel­op­ment, and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal firms.